by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Little has been made public of Michel Berniquez’s troubled past since his death while in police custody on Saturday, June 28. Before he died, according to civilian witnesses, he had punched a cop in the face, was caught and beaten by six police officers, handcuffed and lay prone for up to 20 minutes, until it became apparent he was having difficulty breathing. He died an hour later in a hospital.

He had been in trouble with the law before, and when the 45-year-old man died he was awaiting trial on breaking and entering charges. In April this year, a judge had ruled Berniquez unfit to stand trial on charges of assault, uttering threats and obstructing a public offer. He had been in jail twice, once for breaking and entering, another for sexual assault, and had sought medical attention twice this year for injuries he said were caused by police. Other than that, not much is known. He hadn’t been in touch with his family for 17 years.

Blame game

While charges of police brutality are being levelled and at least one police watchdog group is calling for public inquiries into his death and others, Berniquez’s mental health, and his lack of care, hasn’t seemed to be an issue. But with cutbacks by successive PQ governments to mental health care, there is potential for more cases like his.

“Frankly, I’m amazed it hasn’t happened more often,” says Dr. James Farquhar, a psychiatrist at the Douglas Hospital and, as interim president of the Quebec Mental Health Coalition, an advocate for more mental health-care resources. “There are thousands of mentally ill people who have been squeezed out of hospital beds in the last 10 years, and I’m surprised that more haven’t committed crimes.”

Not that Farquhar believes the situation is at all satisfactory. He says that Montreal has seen the ranks of the homeless swell by up to 2,000 people in the last two years alone, in large part due to cuts to mental health. But no one seems to notice, or care, until it is thrown in their face.

“The problem is that mental health isn’t a sexy issue,” Farquhar says. “It only gets in the media when something terrible happens, like someone dying. What’s more common is suicide. There are thousands of silenced voices, whose deaths could have been prevented with inexpensive services.”

Sick, not criminal

Police watchdog Yves Manseau, head of Mouvement action justice, says the police aren’t trained well enough or sensitive enough to deal with the mentally ill on the streets. And that’s why people like Michel Berniquez, or Jean-Pierre Lizotte, who was beaten by police and bouncers for masturbating outside the Shed Café in August 1999 and later died, are on the business end of law enforcement.

“The problem that police have with anyone who has a disorder, whether it’s drugs or mental illness, is that when they intervene, they approach the person like he’s an enemy, a criminal,” Manseau says. “Police have to be professional and their duty must be to preserve life. And that’s not what we’re getting in their attitude and training.”

Farquhar isn’t so tough on the cops. “I don’t think the police are to blame. They’re overwhelmed,” he says. “The police are the garbage collectors of this whole bad process, just like the Old Brewery Mission.” Rather than dump the whole mess into the hands of the police, he feels the Quebec government should reverse some of the damage done over the past decade and immediately restore some of the funding that’s been chipped away and change its approach to mental health care.

“The current thinking across North America and Europe is that mentally ill people need a best friend, and these best friends are case managers,” he says. He says between 1,000 and 2,000 case managers should be hired to deal with the number of mentally ill in Quebec. “This would be money well spent, and we would get a good visible result.”

He isn’t, however, holding his breath. He says the 2003 Quebec Liberal budget had vague figures about mental-health funding which called for a slight increase, although far short of the estimated $150-million increase he says the system needs per year.